Just Another City Morning
by MadMonkette
Summary: How do you keep Snape from the evils of suicide? Feed him coffee, of course ; )
1. Default Chapter

Standard Disclaimer:  
  
Hopefully, nobody reading this is crazy enough to think that I own Severus Snape or any of the other characters, concepts, etc. out of J.K.Rowling's wonderful books. I'm not making any money off of this. Please don't sue me, because it really wouldn't be worth your time.  
  
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Just Another City Morning  
  
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Why did she always end up working so late?  
  
It was the kind of question that Alexa often asked herself as she walked home in the pre-dawn hours. The neighbourhood that lay between the university and her apartment was, in a word, dodgy. The sidewalk was littered with broken glass and other trash. Brick walls were covered with graffiti and the odd thickly-barred window. It was the last place on Earth that Alexa wanted to be walking alone at 4:30 in the morning. Unfortunately, the buses stopped running at midnight, and taxis were too expensive for her to afford more than occasionally.  
  
Being a graduate student in astrophysics might be interesting, but the pay and hours sucked.  
  
Alexa nervously held her breath as she dodged around an impediment on the sidewalk; a slumped figure had rolled partially out of the relative shelter of a covered storefront. An empty vodka bottle lay by its single visible hand.  
  
Alexa wondered if the department would raise its grad students' pay if she got brutally murdered, or if it would take several students getting bumped off before they would decide to give a damn.  
  
'Maybe', she mused, ' they have some kind of formula for it, like the Department of Public Safety. Say, they'd raise the pay by $200/month if three Ph.D. students got killed, but only by $100 if they were only graduate students. Of course, grad students with teaching assistantships would be worth more, because their professors would be inconvenienced if they went missing.'  
  
The neighbourhood was slowly fading from small manufacturers into the warehouses that lined the sides of the river. At the end of the block lay the Carston St. Bridge, a shining example of good lighting to the gloomy neighbourhoods surrounding it. Alexa always felt safer after crossing it; on the other side lay the student quarters that she called home. The apartments there might be as cheap and crappy as anywhere else in the district, but she could at least feel that people would run towards the screams instead of away. If they heard them, that is.  
  
Alexa began to walk faster.  
  
The view from the bridge was always spectacular at this time of night. What the Carston St. Bridge lacked in style, it more than made up for in location. It had been built just prior to the city's big growth spurt following WWII, and commanded a view of the entire downtown area. In the cold predawn morning, lights from all over the city shone clearly. It was a glittering show of beauty very much in the same style as the stars that Alexa so loved, and made up, at least in a small part, for its resulting light pollution.  
  
Alexa often paused here, when she wasn't too tired, to admire the view. The bridge was relatively safe; she would be able to spot anyone approaching well in advance of their arrival. The bridge's railing and girders were made from thick iron, and she loved the illusion of antiquity that allowed her to pretend that she had somehow fallen a hundred years into the past. 


	2. jacmchp2

Standard Disclaimer:  
  
Hopefully, nobody reading this is crazy enough to think that I own Severus Snape or any of the other characters, concepts, etc. out of J.K.Rowling's wonderful books. I'm not making any money off of this. Please don't sue me, because it really  
  
wouldn't be worth your time.  
  
........................................  
  
Just Another City Morning - Chapter 2  
  
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Alexa leaned forward, deeply breathing in the clean night air.  
  
Suddenly, she noticed that one of the girder's shadows had more in the way of mass then one might normally expect. A man stood there, quite silently, staring at the river below. His clothing and hair were dark, but Alexa was still surprised that she could have missed seeing him. If not for the light from a passing boat, she might have missed him entirely. At a glance, his pale skin could easily be mistaken for a reflection cast up onto the bridge by something in the water below. His hands were clenched tightly on the railing behind him, and his feet were just barely balanced on the edges of a thick girder. Alexa froze as her sleep-deprived brain suddenly put together the pieces of what she was seeing.  
  
'Oh My God!'  
  
She was careful to make no noise as she continued walking towards him.  
  
'Talk', she thought, 'Just talk to him. That's what they do on those cop shows. Try to get him to talk about what's wrong.'  
  
Slowly, softly, she approached him. He had positioned himself in the middle of the bridge, right at the highest point. The drop from there would afford him a good 40m of acceleration, more than enough to kill him when he impacted with the water below.  
  
Alexa stopped beside him. He had made no indication of noticing her approach. His attention seemed captured by the flow of water beneath him and his own grim thoughts. Oddly enough, his expression was impassive; perhaps his thoughts consumed so much of his energy that not even enough remained for him to seem to care about his own impending demise?  
  
Alexa licked her lips, thinking. For over a minute, she stood as silently as the watcher beside her. The night was almost unnaturally quiet; even the cars seemed to have abandoned the bridge to this darker purpose.  
  
Finally, she felt that she had to do something. Waiting was all very good, but there was no telling when his thought processes, and then possibly his life, might come to an abrupt end. Alexa opened her mouth; she had to say something, some gentle inquiry, perhaps, tactfully phrased, but just SOMETHING.  
  
Instead, she burst into a fit of coughing.  
  
'Suave', she cursed herself between coughs. 'Very smooth.'  
  
She had been sick with a bad cold only a couple of weeks before, and the fits still surprised her sometimes. She had definitely gotten his attention, though. He was, in fact, staring at her with exactly the same expression that one might direct towards the friendly, neighbourhood plague carrier.  
  
'Picky, picky,' she grumbled to herself. 'Don't mind dying, but heaven forbid that somebody cough on you.'  
  
When her lungs were finally done rebelling against the rest of her body, she slumped against the railing, almost dizzy for lack of air. The man's attention was still on her, his outraged expression having softened to something that was at least a second cousin to Actually Concerned.  
  
"Hey", she gasped at him, smiling weakly.  
  
He frowned at her, somehow managing to turn it into an autocratic gesture. Even standing there with his fingers clenched behind him, neck craned, he still managed to make Alexa feel grubby and unwelcome.  
  
"I'm not interested in buying or selling", he drawled. Alexa was somehow unsurprised to hear his oh-so-British accent.  
  
"Me neither."  
  
Silence returned after Alexa's brief reply, but it was somehow different than before. An unspoken battle of wills had begun, with him waiting patiently for her to leave and her refusing to go. His eyes had returned to the river.  
  
At last, his aggravation got the better of him.  
  
"What..Do..You..Want??!"  
  
Alexa thought a moment before replying.  
  
"Lots of things, I guess." With seeming casualness, she ran her shoe along the bottom of the railing. "World peace, a Nobel Prize, a happy life for myself and my family and friends. How about you?"  
  
"I want you to go away."  
  
"That's it?"  
  
He turned to look at her directly, then, his body balancing over the bridge support in a way that made her stomach turn.  
  
"Obviously, I want to kill myself. Now, would you please leave so that I can have at least one moment of peace in life before I leave it?"  
  
There was a darkness in his eyes that took the sneering, haughty tone from his words and left only their serious weight. He was watching her, his face empty again, a single cold hand his only connection to the railing. Alexa knew that, at many levels, the situation was out of her control.  
  
"Look," she finally said," I know better than to think that I can fix whatever it is that's broken in your life. I'm going to go get a cup of coffee, though, and I'd really like it if you'd join me."  
  
..................................  
  
Will Snape join Alexa for a cup of coffee? Will this actually develop into a decent story? Is anybody actually reading this thing? Not even I know the answer to the first two questions, but please feel free to let me know about the third! 


	3. jacmchp3

Even in a city that never slept, a quarter til five was an odd time to go hunting a cup of coffee. Stylish coffee shops usually opened at the fashionably late hour of 7 o'clock. The few old hacker joints, as Alexa's roommates affectionately called them, that were open were strictly the domain of dockworkers coughing up phlegm from a lifetime of smoking as they waited for the start of another workday. Definitely not the type of place to bring somebody with a delicate mental constitution. Or a weak stomach.  
  
He was walking beside her with a quick, nervous energy. Alexa wasn't kidding herself that he had come along with her so quietly because he wanted to be there. Most likely, he figured that it would be the quickest way to be rid of her without getting the police involved. He could go with her, drink some coffee, swear that everything was fine, and then go back to the bridge once she was gone.  
  
Or, maybe not.  
  
Alexa glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. For a moment, just a single instant after she had made her abrupt invitation, he had shown a flash of real emotion. It hadn't been irritation or disapproval. Instead, his dark eyes had flashed a startled expression, as if surprised that she would even bother. Alexa didn't want to think about what this man's life must be like that he could be so completely caught off guard by a simple act of kindness.  
  
Alexa was steering them towards The Pit, the only place that she could think of that was open, served coffee, and stood any chance of not depressing the man more than he already was. The Pit was actually a back- alley bar, but it routinely stayed open until six in the morning selling coffee and fruit juice after the legal liquor sales hour had passed. Rumour had it that a carful of drunk patrons, one of them the owner's nephew, had gotten into a fatal traffic accident after leaving drunk at closing hour. The owner had decided then that drunken patrons needed an option besides getting behind the wheel of a car. He might not be able to serve them alcohol, but they didn't have to leave until after the morning buses started to run.  
  
The entrance to The Pit was a little odd: a basement door hidden behind a couple of large dumpsters in a rather forgettable alley. Alexa had to look hard before being certain that it was the right one. Once inside, though, the interior was unforgettable. It had been styled after a prohibition saloon, with old-fashioned fixtures of wood and polished brass. The lighting was low and intimate, and a raised stage dominated the back wall. At this time of the morning, the place was nearly empty. The only other patrons sat at a couple of tables near the stage. Alexa recognized several of them as belonging to a local band; they were probably still celebrating that night's gig. A single bartender reined behind the smooth, wooden bar.  
  
Alexa steered her companion over to one of the tables along the back wall, as far away from the other patrons as possible. She had a feeling that what was coming could do without curious ears. He seemed content to passively follow her instructions, simply shrugging when she asked what he wanted to drink.  
  
The bartender, bored, flipped out a couple of steaming coffees almost before she had finished ordering. A latte for herself, and a more mild, house blend for him. There was no use in taking a chance on him getting worked up from too much caffeine. She completed her haul with a bag of pretzels that could be munched to cover awkward silences. Then, she headed back over to where he awaited. 


End file.
